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Thursday, December 13, 2012

Hate Crimes; What is the real number?

Hate
Crimes; What is the real number?

Date of publication: 23th October 2012

A
hate crime is any criminal offence committed against a person or property that
is motivated by hostility towards someone based on disability, race, religion, gender
identity or sexual orientation.

According
to the BBC NEWS UK more than 2000 such offences were recorded in 2011, up one
third from 2010. Police have said this was partly due to an increased willingness to report
crimes. Overall hate crimes linked to race religion sexual orientation and
disability fell by 3600 to 44,500. Hate crime monitoring began in 2008 to raise
awareness of the problem. In 2011 a total of 44,519 hate crimes were recorded
compared with 48,127 in 2010.

According to the home office
website I have found there were 43,748
hate crimes recorded by police in 2011/2012. These figures are related to the
five monitored strands of the hate crime classifications used by the criminal
justice system and is not a count of crimes as more than one form of hate crime
can be assigned to an offence. Indicative data suggest that less than 5% of
hate crime offences have more than one monitored strand assigned ( this ranged
between 1% and 7% of offences for the 17 forces whose data was reviewed).

Of the 43,748 hate crimes recorded
by police:

*35,816 (82%) were race hate
crimes

*1621 (4%) were religion hate
crimes

*4252 (10%) were sexual
orientation hate crimes

*1744 (4%) were disability hate
crimes

*315 (1%) were transgender hate
crimes.

There is a discrepancy
in numbers by 751 hate crimes. I’m not sure what database the BBC NEWS got
there information from; maybe different
from the home office? Is that why there
is a slight difference in numbers? What I have noticed is the home office seems
to have broken down the statistics so we as a public get an actual over view of
what a hate crime is and how the statistics are going down slightly. If anyone
has any information regarding this discrepancy in numbers, please comment
below.